The Destroyer #1Created, The DestroyerWarren Murphy& Richard SapirThis novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.PINNACLE BOOKSare published byWindsor Publishing Corp.475 Park Avenue SouthNew York, NY 10016Copyright (c) 1971 by Richard Sapir and Warren MurphyAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.Eighteenth printing: September, 1988Printed in the United States of America

(Editor's Note: When we decided to reissue this book, we were told by Chiun, the Master of Sinanju whose exploits are described in this series, that he would write the foreword. We could find nobody to tell him no, and we dared not do otherwise.)FOREWORDBy Chiun, the Reigning Master of Sinanju.YOU READ LIESDo not believe what you read in this book. It is too late for them now to set things right and you should not encourage these people to try.This book is called a reissue which apparently is a new Pinnacle publishing word for a thin fabric of lies and distortions that is repeated at least once.Do you know that when this alleged book was originally printed, it lacked even my picture? So now they make amends. Hah! Quick. Turn back. Look at the cover again. See? The pale piece of pig's ear shown there looks indisputably like my disciple, Remo. Notice the lines of weakness about the eyes. Notice the slobbering lips showing the creature's sloth. Notice the big white nose, a standard of ugliness to civilized people everywhere.But, hold. Who is this Oriental on the cover? Who is that old man?I know what these people are up to. They are trying to deceive you into believing that that is the countenance of the Master in an effort to trick some people into buying this compendium of literary duck droppings.DO NOT BE FOOLEDThat is not my picture. The face they portray is a cruel, hard, evil face. Where is the love, the kindness, the general sweetness that is my countenance? (To Pinnacle editors: "countenance" means what someone looks like.-Chiun.)MORE LIES IN THIS BOOKI appear briefly in this shoddy manuscript. The scribbler, Murphy, describes me as a karate teacher. To call the art of Sinanju karate is to call the noontime sun a flashlight. So much for Murphy.I am going to tell you some things about this book. It is called Created, The Destroyer. Everyone knows its real title is Chiun Meets Pale Piece of Pig's Ear.And then they call the Masters of Sinanju killers. We are not killers but assassins. If America had competent assassins instead of amateur do-it-yourselfers, your civilization

would be more orderly. But what can you expect of a country which would take off its beautiful daytime dreams to show fat men yelling about Gatewater? I will not forget them for that.And another... oh, why bother? Trying to correct a typical Murphy set of mistakes is like trying to scoop out the ocean with a spoon.CONGRATULATIONSFortunately, through a clerical error on the part of the scribbler, I have established my own following who receive bits of countervailing truth to stem this vicious propaganda. If you are among them, you are very lucky. You have perceived the goodness of this series, which is me.But do not write to me at Pinnacle, for then you will expose yourself to all sorts of solicitation for various garbage which emanates from that publisher.When you have Chiun, you need nothing else.A FINAL DECEITPinnacle Books has offered Murphy a chance to correct some of the errors in this pile of trash. I have warned him that he had better not: his perfidy should stand untouched through the ages as a demonstration of how low some men will sink just to enrich themselves.Instead, out of the goodness of my heart, I offered to help set things straight with this foreword. He said they would print it as I wrote it I do not trust these people.Let them know now that I will read every word of these pages.You are reading an English translation of my remarks. It is not as good as real language, but it is better than nothing. When you are done with what I say, THROW THIS BOOK AWAY. It will do you no good.With moderate tolerance for you,I am forever,ChiunMaster of Sinanju.

CHAPTER ONEEveryone knew why Remo Williams was going to die. The chief of the Newark Police Department told his close friends Williams was a sacrifice to the civil rights groups."Who ever heard of a cop going to the chair... and for killing a dope-pusher? Maybe a suspension... maybe even dismissal... but the chair? If that punk had been white, Williams wouldn't get the chair."To the press, the chief said: "It is a tragic incident. Williams always had a good record as a policeman."But the reporters weren't fooled. They knew why Williams had to die. "He was crazy. Christ, you couldn't let that lunatic out in the streets again. How did he ever get on the force in the first place? Beats a man to a pulp, leaves him to die in an alley, drops his badge for evidence, then expects to get away with it by hollering 'frame-up.' Damn fool."The defense attorney knew why his client lost. "That damned badge. We couldn't get around that evidence. Why wouldn't he admit he beat up that bum? Even so, the judge never should have given him the chair."The judge was quite certain why he sentenced Williams to die. It was very simple. He was told to.Not that he knew why he was told to. In certain circles, you don't ask questions about verdicts.Only one man had no conception of why the sentence was so severe and so swift. And his wondering would stop at 11:35 o'clock that night. It wouldn't make any difference after

that.Remo Williams sat on the cot hi his cell chainsmoking cigarettes. His light brown hair was shaved close at the temples where the guards would place the electrodes.The gray trousers issued to all inmates at the State Prison already had been slit nearly to the knees. The white socks were fresh and clean with the exception of gray spots from ashes he dropped. He had stopped using the ash tray the day before.He simply threw the finished cigarette on the gray painted floor each time and watched its life burn out. It wouldn't even leave a mark, just burn out slowly, hardly noticeable.The guards would eventually open the cell door and have an inmate clean up the butts. They would wait outside the cell, Remo between them, while the inmate swept.And when Remo was returned, there would be no trace that he had ever smoked in there or that a cigarette had died on the floor.He could leave nothing in the death cell that would remain. The cot was steel and had no paint in which to even scratch his initials. The mattress would be replaced if he ripped it.He had no laces to tie anything anywhere. He couldn't even break the one light bulb above his head. It was protected by a steel-enmeshed glass plate.He could break the ashtray. That he could do, if he wanted. He could scratch something in the white enameled sink with no stopper and one faucet.But what would he inscribe? Advice? A note? To whom? For what? What would he tell them?That you do your job, you're promoted, and one dark night they find a dead dope-pusher in an alley on your beat, and he's got your badge in his hand, and they don't give you a medal, they fall for the frame-up, and you get the chair.It's you who winds up in the death house-the place you wanted to send so many men to, so many hoods, punks, killers, the liars, the pushers, the scum that preyed on society. And then the people, the right and the good you sweated for and risked your neck for, rise in their majesty and turn on you.What do you do? All of a sudden, they're sending people to the chair-the judges who won't give death to the predators, but give it to the protectors.You can't write that in a sink. So you light another cigarette and throw the burning butt on the floor and watch it burn. The smoke curls up and disappears before rising three feet. And then the butt goes out. But by that time, you have another one ready to light and another one ready to throw.Remo Williams took the mentholated cigarette from his mouth, held it before his face where he could see the red ember feeding on that hint of mint, then tossed it on the floor.He took a fresh cigarette from one of two packs at his side on the brown, scratchy-wool blanket. He looked up at the two guards whose backs were to him. He hadn't spoken to them since he entered Death Row two days ago.They had never walked the morning hours on a beat looking at windows and waiting to be made detective. They had never been framed in an alley with a pusher, who as a corpse, didn't have the stuff on him.They went home at night and they left the prison and the law behind them. They waited for their pensions and the winterized cottage in their fifth year. They were the clerks of law enforcement.The law.Williams looked at the freshly-lit cigarette in his hand and suddenly hated the mentholated taste that was like eating Vicks. He tore the filter off and tossed it on the floor. Then he put the ragged end of the cigarette between his lips and drew deeply.He inhaled on the cigarette and lay back on the cot, blowing the smoke toward the

seamless plaster ceiling that was as gray as the floor and the walls and the prospects of those guards out in the corridor.He had strong, sharp, features and deepset brown eyes that crinkled at the edges, but not from laughter. Remo rarely laughed.His body was hard, his chest deep, his hips perhaps a bit too wide for a man, but not too large for his powerful shoulders.He had been the brick of the line in high school and murder on defense. And all of it hadn't been worth the shower water that carried the sweat down the drain.So somebody scored.Suddenly, Remo's facial muscles tightened and he sat up again. His eyes, focussed at no particular range, suddenly detected every line in the floor. He saw the sink and for the first time really saw the solid gray metal of the bars. He crushed out the cigarette with his toe.Well, damn it, they didn't score... not through his slot. They never went through the middle of the line. And if he left only that, he left something.Slowly, he leaned forward and reached for the burned-out butts on the floor.One of the guards spoke. He was a tall man and his uniform was too tight around the shoulders. Remo vaguely remembered his name as Mike."It'll be cleaned," Mike said."No, I'll do it," Remo said. The words were slow in coming out. How long had it been since he had spoken?"Do you want something to eat...?" the guard's voice trailed off. He paused and looked down the corridor. "It's late, but we could get you something."Remo shook his head. "I'll just finish cleaning up. How much time do I have?""About a half hour."Remo did not answer. He wiped the ashes together with his big, square hands. If he had a mop, it would go better."Is there anything we can get you?" Mike asked.Remo shook his head. "No thanks." He decided he liked the guard. "Want a cigarette?""No. I can't smoke here.""Oh. Well, would you like the pack? I've got two packs.""Couldn't take it, but thanks anyway.""It must be a tough job you have," Remo lied.The guard shrugged. "It's a job. You know. Not like pounding a beat. But we have to watch it anyhow.""Yeah," Remo said and smiled. "A job's a job.""Yeah," the guard said. There was silence, all the louder for having been broken once.Remo tried to think of something to say but couldn't.The guard spoke again. "The priest will be here in a while." It was almost a question.Remo grimaced. "More power to him. I haven't been to church since I was an altar boy. Hell, every punk I arrest tells me he was an altar boy, even Protestants and Jews. Maybe they know something I don't. Maybe it helps. Yeah, I'll see the priest."Remo stretched his legs and walked over to the bars where he rested his right hand. "It's a hell of a business, isn't it?"The guard nodded, but both men took a step back from the bars.The guard said: "I can get the priest now if you want.""Sure," Remo said. "But in a minute. Wait."The guard lowered his eyes. "There isn't much time.""We have a few minutes.""Okay. He'll be here anyway without us calling.""It's routine?" The final insult. They would try to save his mortal soul because it was

spelled out in the state's penal code."I don't know," he answered. "I've only been here two years. We haven't had anyone in that time. Look, I'll go see if he's ready.""No, don't.""I'll be back. Just to the end of the corridor.""Sure, go ahead," Remo said. It wasn't worth arguing. "Take your time. I'm sorry."

CHAPTER TWOIt was a legend in the state prison that condemned men usually ate a heartier meal on the night of an execution than Warden Matthew Wesley Johnson did. Tonight was no exception.The warden tried to concentrate on his evening paper. He propped it against the untouched dinner tray on his office desk. The air conditioner hummed. He would have to be at the electrocution. It was his job. Why the hell didn't the telephone ring?Johnson looked to the window. Night boats moved slowly up the narrow black river toward the hundreds of piers and docks that dotted the nearby sea coast, their lights blinking codes and warnings to receivers who were rarely there.He glanced at his watch. Only twenty-five minutes left. He went back to the Newark Evening News. The crime rate was rising, a front-page story warned. So what, he thought. It rises every year. Why keep putting it on the front page to get people worked up? Besides, we've got a solution to the crime problem now. We're going to execute all the cops. He thought of Remo Williams in the cell.Long ago, he had decided it was the smell that bothered him. Not from his frozen roast beef dinner, untouched before him, but from the anticipation of the night. Maybe if it were cleaner. But there was the smell. Even with the exhaust fan, there was the smell. Flesh burning.How many had it been in seventeen years? Seven men. Tonight would be eight. Johnson remembered every one of them. Why didn't the phone ring? Why didn't the governor call with a reprieve? Remo Williams was no thug. He was a cop, damn it, a cop.Johnson turned to the inside pages of the paper, looking for crime news. Man charged with murder. He read through the story looking for details. Negro knifing in Jersey City. He would probably get the man. A bar fight. That would be dropped to manslaughter. No death sentence there. Good.But here was Williams tonight. Johnson shook his head. What were the courts coming to? Were they panicked by these civil rights groups? Didn't they know that each sacrifice has to lead to a bigger sacrifice, until you have nothing left? Execute a cop for killing a punk? Was a decade of progress to be followed by a decade of vigilante law?It had been three years since the last execution. He had thought things were changing. But the swiftness of Williams' indictment and trial, the quick rejection of his appeal, and now this poor man waiting in the death house.Damn it. What did he need this job for? Johnson looked across his broad oak desk to a framed picture in the corner. Mary and the children. Where else could he get $24,000 a year? Served him right for backing political winners.Why didn't the bastard phone with a pardon? How many men did they expect him to fry for $24,000?The button lit up on his ivory telephone's private line. Relief spread across his broad Swedish features. He snatched the telephone to his ear. "Johnson here," he said."Good to catch you there, Matt," came the familiar voice over the phone.Where the hell did you think I'd be, Johnson thought. He said: "Good to hear from you, Governor. You don't know how good.""I'm sorry, Matt. There isn't going to be a pardon. Not even a stay."

"Oh," Johnson said; his free hand crumpled the newspaper."I'm calling for a favor, Matt.""Sure, Governor, sure," Johnson said. He pushed the newspaper from the edge of the desk toward the waste basket."In a few minutes, a Capuchin monk and his escort will be at the prison. He may be on his way to your office now. Let him talk to this what's-his-name, Williams, the one who's going to die. Let the other man witness the execution from the control panel.""But there's very little visibility from the control panel," Johnson said."What the hell. Let him stay there anyhow.""It's against regulations to allow...""Matt. C'mon. We're not kids anymore. Let him stay there." The Governor was no longer asking; he was telling. Johnson's eyes strayed toward the picture of his wife and children."And one more thing. This observer's from some kind of a private hospital. The State Department of Institutions has given them permission to have this Williams' body. Some kind of criminal-mind research, Doctor Frankenstein stuff. They'll have an ambulance there to pick it up. Leave word at the gate. They'll have written authorization from me."Weariness settled over Warden Johnson."Okay, Governor. I'll see that it's done.""Good, Matt. How're Mary and the kids?""Fine, Governor. Just fine.""Well, give them my best. I'll be stopping down one of these days.""Fine, Governor, fine."The Governor hung up. Johnson looked at the phone in his hand. "Go to hell," he snarled and slammed it onto the cradle.His profanity startled his secretary who had just slithered quietly into the office with the walk she usually reserved for walking past groups of prisoners."There's a priest and another man here," she said. "Should I bring them in?""No," Johnson said. "Have the priest taken down to see the prisoner, Williams. Have the other man escorted to the death house. I don't want to see them.""What about our chaplain, warden? Isn't it strange to...?"Johnson interrupted. "This whole damn business of being the state's executioner is strange, Miss Scanlon. Just do what I say."He spun around in his chair to look at the air conditioner pumping cool, fresh, clean air into his office.

CHAPTER THREERemo Williams lay on his back, his eyes shut, his fingers drumming silently on his stomach. What was death anyway? Like sleep? He liked to sleep. Most people liked to sleep. Why fear death?If he opened his eyes, he would see the cell. But in his personal darkness, he was free for a moment, free from the jail and the men who would kill him, free from the gray bars and the harsh overhead light. Darkness was peaceful.He heard the soft rhythm of feet padding along the corridor, louder, louder, louder. Then they stopped. Voices mumbled, clothes rustled, keys tingled and then with a clack, the cell door opened. Remo blinked in the yellow light. A brown-robed monk clutching a black cross with a silver Christ stood inside the cell door waiting. The dark cowl shaded the monk's eyes. He held the crucifix in his right hand, the left apparently tucked beneath the folds of his robe.The guard, stepping back from the cell door, said to Remo: "The priest."

Remo sat up on the cot, bringing his legs in front of him. His back was to the wall. The monk stood motionless."You've got five minutes, Father," the guard said. The key clicked again in the lock.The monk nodded. Remo motioned to the empty space beside him on the cot."Thank you," the monk said. Holding the crucifix like a test tube he was afraid to spill, he sat down. His face was hard and lined. His blue eyes seemed to be judging Remo for a punch instead of salvation. Droplets of perspiration on bis upper lip caught the light from the bulb."Do you want to be saved, my son?" he asked. It was rather loud for such a personal question."Sure," Remo said. "Who doesn't?""Good. Do you know how to examine your conscience, make an act of contrition?""Vaguely, Father. I...""I know, my son. God will help you.""Yeah," Remo said without enthusiasm. If he got this over fast, maybe there'd be time for another cigarette."What are your sins?""I really don't know.""We can start with violation of the Lord's commandment not to kill."."I've not killed.""How many men?""Including Vietnam?""No, Vietnam doesn't count.""That wasn't killing, huh?""In war, killing is not a mortal sin.""How about peace, when the State says you did, but you didn't? How about that?""Are you talking about your conviction?""Yes." Remo stared at his knees. This might go on all night."Well, in that case...""All right, Father. I confess it. I killed the man," Remo lied. His trousers, fresh gray twill, hadn't even had a chance to get worn at the knees.Remo noticed that the monk's cowl was perfectly clean, spotlessly new too. Was that a smile on his face?"Coveted anyone's property?""No.""Stolen?""No.""Impure actions?""Sex?""Yes.""Sure. In thought and deed.""How many times?"Remo almost attempted an estimate. "I don't know. Enough."The monk nodded. "Blasphemy, anger, pride, jealousy, gluttony?""No," Remo said, rather loudly.The monk leaned forward. Remo could see tobacco stains on his teeth. The light subtle smell of expensive aftershave lotion wafted into his nostrils. The monk whispered: "You're a goddam liar."Remo jumped back. His legs hit the floor. His hands moved up almost as if to ward off a blow. The priest remained leaning forward, motionless. And he was grinning. The priest was grinning. The guards couldn't see it because of the cowl, but Remo could. The state

was playing its final joke on him: a tobacco-stained, grinning, swearing monk."Shhh," said the brown-robed man."You're no priest," Remo said."And you're not Dick Tracy. Keep your voice down. You want to save your soul or your ass?"Remo stared at the crucifix, the silver Christ on the black cross and the black button at the feet.A black button?"Listen. We don't have much time," the man in the robe said. "You want to live?"The word seemed to float from Remo's soul. "Sure.""Get on your knees."Remo went to the floor in one smooth motion. The cot level was at his chest, his chin before the robe's angular folds that indicated knees.The crucifix came toward his head. He looked up at the silvery feet pierced by a silver nail. The man's hand was around Christ's gut."Pretend to kiss the feet. Yes. Closer. There's a black pill. Ease it off with your teeth. Go ahead, but don't bite into it."Remo opened his mouth and closed his teeth around the black button beneath the silver feet. He saw the robes swirl as the man got up to block the guard's view. The pill came off. It was hard, probably plastic."Don't break the shell. Don't break the shell," the man hissed. "Stick it in the corner of your mouth. When they strap the helmet around your head so you can't move, bite into the pill hard and swallow the whole thing. Not before. Do you hear?"Remo held the pill on his tongue. The man was no longer smiling.Remo glared at him. Why were all the big decisions in his life forced on him when he didn't have time to think? He tongued the pill. Poison? No point in that. Spit it out? Then what?Nothing to lose. Lose? He wasn't winning. Remo tried to taste the pill without letting it touch his teeth. No taste. The monk hovered over him. Remo nestled the pill under his tongue and said a very fast and very sincere prayer. "Okay," he said."Time's up," the guard's voice boomed."God bless you my son," the monk said loudly, making the sign of the cross with the crucifix. Then, in a whisper, "See you later."He padded from the cell, his head bowed, the crucifix before him and his left hand flinting steel. Steel? It was a hook.Remo placed his right hand on the cot and got to his feet. The saliva seemed to gush into his mouth. He wanted to swallow bad. Hold down the pill. Under the tongue. Right where it is. Okay, now swallow... carefully."All right, Remo," the guard said. "Time to go."The cell door was open, with one guard on each side. A large, blond man and the regular prison chaplain waited in the center of Death Row. The monk was gone. Remo swallowed once more, very carefully, clamped his tongue down over the pill and walked out to meet them.

CHAPTER FOURHarold Haines didn't like it. Four executions in seven years, and all of a sudden, the state had to send in electricians to monkey with the power box."A routine check," they had said. "You haven't used it for three years. We just want to make sure it'll work."And now, it just didn't sound right. Haines' pale face tilted toward the head-high gray regulator panel as he turned a rheostat. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced

momentarily at the glass partition separating the control room from the chair room.The generators moaned uphill to full strength. The harsh yellow lights dimmed slightly as the electricity drained into the chair room.Haines shook his head and turned the juice back down. The generators resumed their low, malevolent hum, but just didn't sound right. Nothing was right about this execution. Was it the three-year layoff?Haines adjusted his gray cotton uniform, starched to almost painful creases. This one was a cop. So Williams was a cop. So what?Haines had seen four go in his chair and Williams would be his fifth. He'd sit in the chair too petrified to speak or move his bowels and then he'd look around. The brave ones did that, the ones who weren't afraid to open their eyes.And Harold Haines would let him wait. He'd delay turning up the voltage until the warden looked angrily toward the control room. And then Harold Haines would help Williams by killing him."Something the matter?" came a voice.Haines spun suddenly around as though a teacher had caught him playing with himself in the boys' room.A short dark-haired man in a black suit, carrying a gray metallic attache case, was standing beside the control panel."Something the matter?" the man repeated softly. "You look sort of excited. Flushed in the face.""No," Haines snapped. "Who are you and what do you want here?"The man smiled slightly, but did not move at the sharp question."The warden's office told you I was coming."Haines nodded quickly. "Yeah, that's right, they did." He turned back to the control board to make the final check. "He'll be here in a minute," Haines said, glancing at the voltmeter. "It's not much of a view from where we are, but if you go to the glass partition, you can see fine.""Thank you," the dark-haired man said, but made no move. He waited until Haines involved himself with his toys of death, then examined the steel rivets at the base of the generator cover. He counted to himself: "One, two, three, four... there it is."He carefully set the attache case at the base of the panel where it touched the fifth rivet in the row. The rivet was brighter than the others, and for a good reason. It was not steel but magnesium.The man glanced casually around the room, Haines, the ceiling, the glass, and when he seemed to be focussing on the death chair, his right leg imperceptibly pressed the attache case against the fifth rivet, which moved an eighth of an inch.There was a faint click. The man moved away from the panel toward the glass partition.Haines had not heard the click. He glanced up from the dials on the board. "You from the state?" he asked."Yes," the man said and appeared to be very busy watching the chair.Two rooms away, Dr. Marlowe Phillips poured a stiff Scotch into a water glass, then put the whisky bottle back into the white medicine cabinet. Moments before, he had hung up the telephone. It had been the warden. He had almost shouted when the warden told him he would not have to perform an autopsy on Williams."Apparently, Williams has some unusual characteristics," the warden had told him. "Some research group wants his body. Don't ask me what it's all about. I'm damned if I know. But I didn't imagine you'd mind."Mind? Phillips sniffed the beautiful alcohol aroma whispering comforting messages to his entire nervous system. He'd been prison doctor almost thirty years. He'd performed thirteen autopsies on electrocuted men. And he knew-no matter what the books said or the

state said or his own knowledge and skill said-that it wasn't the chair that killed them, it was the autopsy knife.The electric jolt numbed them, paralyzed them, destroyed their nervous systems and brought them to the edge of death. They would die. There was no saving them. But the autopsy, within minutes of the electrocution, really finished the job, he was convinced.Dr. Phillips looked at the drink in his hand. It had started that way thirty years ago. His first autopsy and the "dead man" had twitched when the scalpel slipped into his flesh. It had never happened again, but it never had to. Dr. Phillips was convinced. And so it started. Just one drink to forget.But not tonight. Just one drink to celebrate. I'm free. Let someone else kill the poor half-dead bastard, or let him die out his last few minutes in one piece. He gulped down the whisky and walked back toward the medicine cabinet.The question stuck in his mind: what was unusual about Williams? His last physical had shown no irregularities, except for a high tolerance of pain and exceptionally fast reflexes. Other than that, he was perfectly normal.But Dr. Phillips could not be bothered worrying about such trivia. He opened the medicine cabinet again and reached for the best medicine in the world.It wasn't really a mile. It was too short for that. The whole damned corridor was too short. Remo walked behind the warden. He could feel the closeness of the guards behind him but he would not look at them. His mind was on the pill. He kept swallowing and swallowing, keeping the pill pressed beneath his tongue. He never knew he could create this much saliva.His tongue was numb. He could barely feel the pill. Was it still there? He couldn't reach his hand in to find out for sure. Sure? What was sure? Maybe he should spit it out. Maybe if he could see it again. And if he saw it, what then? What would he do with it? Show it to the warden and ask him for an analysis? Maybe he could run to a drugstore in Newark, or take a plane to Paris and have it examined there? Yeah, that would be fine. Maybe the warden would go for that. And the guards. He'd take them all with him. What were there, three of them, four, five? A hundred? This was a whole state against him. The last door loomed ahead.

CHAPTER FIVERemo sat down in the chair by himself. He never thought he would. He kept his arms across his lap. Maybe they wouldn't electrocute him if they knew he'd never move his arms of his own accord. He wanted to urinate. A giant ceiling exhaust fan whirred noisily over his head.There was a guard for each arm and they placed his arms on the chair arms and they strapped his arms to the chair arms with metallic straps and it surprised Remo that he let them do it as easily as if he wanted to help them. And he wanted to scream. But he didn't and he let them fasten his legs to the chair's legs with more straps.And then he shut his eyes and rolled the pill beneath the left eye tooth which would be better for splitting it open.He let them hinge a small metal half-helmet, resembling the network of straps from inside a football helmet, over his head. A band inside it pulled his forehead back against the back of the wooden chair. It was cold against his neck, cold as death.And then Remo Williams bit into the pill hard, hard enough to crack his teeth and they didn't crack. And a sweet warm ooze filled his mouth and mingled with the saliva and he swallowed all the sweetness and shells that were in his mouth.Then he became warm all over and drowsy and it didn't seem to matter anymore that they were going to kill him. So he opened his eyes and saw them standing there, the guards, the warden, and was it a minister or a priest? It certainly didn't look like the monk.

Maybe it was. Maybe this was something they always did with executions: give a man the feeling that he had a chance so he'd go along willingly."Have you any last words . .. ?" Was it the warden's voice? Remo tried to shake his head, but it was locked to the chair. He couldn't move. Was it the pill or the straps that held him? Suddenly the question became fascinating. As soft, warm, darkness enveloped him, Remo decided he must look into the question someday. He would sleep until tomorrow.Harold Haines, his visitor completely forgotten now, looked through the glass partition waiting for the warden to get angry. There were no reporters allowed at this one, and the few chairs in the room were empty. Tomorrow's papers would carry only a few paragraphs and the name of Harold Haines would not be mentioned. If reporters had been present, there would have been big stories telling about everything, even about the man who threw the switches, Harold Haines. The warden wasn't moving. Neither was Williams. He seemed relaxed. Was he unconscious? His eyes were shut. His arms were limp. The bastard was out cold.Well, Haines would wake him up, all right. There would be a gradual building of current, then the full force.Haines was breathing hard now, a caressing, waking current, then slowly building to the climax and the final rush of juice into heaven. He could feel the heat of his own breath as the warden stepped back from the chair and nodded toward the control room. Haines slowly turned the twin rheostats. The generators hummed. Williams' body jolted upright in the seat. Haines eased off the rheostats slowly. He could already almost taste the faint sweet pork smell of burning flesh tickling the noses of those inside the room.The warden nodded again. And Haines threw another jolt into Williams as the generators hummed.The body twitched again, then sagged into the seat. Haines, gasping with a tremendous feeling of freedom, cut off the juice and let the generators die. It was all over.He noticed his visitor was gone. He continued to throw switches shutting off the circuits. He was angered by the bad manners of his visitors, the bad press coverage, the bad sound of the generators. Something, a lot of things, had been wrong. Tomorrow, he promised himself, he was going to take the whole control panel apart to see what was wrong with it.Remo Williams' body sagged peacefully in the chair. His head, tilted toward one shoulder, clunked forward onto his chest as the guards freed his limp body from the bands. Dr. Phillips, who had come into the room after the electrocution was over, placed a stethoscope perfunctorily on Williams' chest, pronounced him dead, and left.Attendants from the research center immediately got the warden's permission to move the body. They lifted Williams' corpse onto the wheeled stretcher gently, then covered him with a sheet. The guards thought the white-frocked attendants rather odd in the way they rushed moving the body as though the dead couldn't wait.The attendants had placed Williams' hands rather formally across his belt buckle. But as they pushed the stretcher quickly down dark prison corridors, the hands slid loose and off the stretcher until his prone body looked like a diver entering the business part of a half-gainer. The attendants pushed the stretcher, its sheets barely trailing the ground, to a door opening onto a loading dock in the prison yard.A new Buick ambulance waited there with open doors. The attendants lifted the wheeled stretcher into the ambulance, then shut the vehicle's doors, whose windows were blacked out. The windows on the sides were also blackened. Inside, the dark-haired man who had stood by Haines in the control room threw a blanket off his lap as soon as the doors clicked shut. In his right hand, he held a hypodermic ready. With his left, he switched on an overhead light, then leaned over the body and ripped open the gray prison shirt.

He felt carefully for the fifth rib, then sank the needle through the flesh into Remo's heart. Carefully, he pushed the plunger, slowly, evenly, until all the liquid was emptied into Remo's body.He withdrew the needle, careful to keep it on its entry path.When it was out of the body, he tossed it toward a corner, then reached up to the ceiling and pulled down an oxygen mask on a tube. He could hear the hissing of the oxygen which started pumping the moment the mask was removed from its brace on the ceiling.He pressed the mask over Remo's still pale face, then waited, staring at his watch. After a minute, he pressed his ear to Remo's chest. Slowly, a smile formed on his lips.He straightened up, removed the mask, replaced it in its bracket, made sure the oxygen was off, then tapped on the window behind the driver's head.The ambulance's motors coughed and the big Buick was on its way.About fifteen miles from the prison, the ambulance stopped at a side road. One of the attendants, who had exchanged his white garb for a civilian suit, got out of the front seat and went over to a parked car against whose fender a man with a hook for a left hand leaned, casually smoking a cigarette.The hooked man flipped the keys to the attendant, dropped his cigarette, then trotted to the rear of the ambulance. He rapped on the door and in an even tone, said: "MacCleary."The doors flung open and he stepped into the vehicle in one smooth motion, almost like a large cat darting into a cave.The dark-haired man shut the doors. MacCleary shuffled rapidly to a seat beside the body, still motionless on the black leather of the stretcher. MacCleary turned to the other man and said, "Well?""We got a winner, Conn," the dark-haired man said. "I think we got a winner.""Nobody wins in this outfit," the man with the hook said. "Nobody wins."

CHAPTER SIXThe air in the ambulance tasted shot through with oral laxatives as the ambulance rolled along. "Probably the high oxygen content," MacCleary thought to himself.He concentrated on the man on the raised stretcher in the middle of the ambulance and rejoiced at every up-and-down motion of the large chest covered by the sheet. This was the man. He might be the answer."Turn on the lights," MacCleary said."You sure, Conn? I was told no lights.""The lights," MacCleary repeated. "Just for a minute."The dark-haired man moved an arm and suddenly the confinement was bathed in a bright yellow glow. MacCleary blinked and then focussed on the face, the high cheekbones, the closed eyes, the lids that hid the deep brown orbs, the smooth white skin, marked by only a faint scar on the chin.MacCleary blinked and MacCleary stared. He stared at the biggest pot he had ever been in on. It had violated every rule he had ever been taught about all the eggs in one basket. It was the wrong solution, but it was the only solution.And, if the breathing human body on the stretcher worked, a lot more would work. A lot more people would live in a land they loved. The greatest nation on earth might survive as it has been intended to survive. And it might all rest with the slumbering body with the closed eyelids, glinting a shade darker in the bright light than the man's normal skin. Those eyelids. MacCleary had seen them before. And the light had shone on them then, too.Only, it had been the sunlight, the hot Vietnam sun and the Marine had been sleeping underneath the wooden skeleton of a gray tree.

MacCleary had been in the CIA then. Dressed in Army fatigues, he had hiked up a hill with two Marines as escorts.It was a back and forth stalemate time of the war. In a few months, he would be home. But right now, MacCleary had an assignment.In a small village within American lines, a Viet Cong had set up headquarters. CIA's objective: enter main communications house and capture records, a list of major Viet Cong sympathizers in Saigon.If the farmhouse, pinpointed as communications center for the VC, were attacked in normal fashion with men inching forward, the Commies could burn their lists of contacts. CIA wanted the lists.MacCleary had worked out a plan to have a full company of Marines stage a charge on the building, with no one seeking cover, almost a Kamikaze attack. This, MacCleary hoped, would be fast enough to deny the time for record burning or anything else.The Marines gave him a company. But when he approached the captain in command of the unit, the captain just nodded to a tarpaulin-covered pile on which two Marines sat, their M-l's cradled in their arms."What's that?" MacCleary asked."Your records," the captain said casually. He was a small, thin man who managed to keep his uniform pressed even in combat conditions."But the assault? You weren't supposed to start it before I got here.""We didn't need you," the captain said. "Take your records and get your ass out of here. We've done our job."MacCleary started to say something, then turned and walked to the tarpaulin. After 20 minutes of leafing through heavy parchments with Chinese lettering, MacCleary smiled and nodded his respects to the Marine captain."I will make a report expressing CIA gratitude," he said."You do that," the captain said sullenly.MacCleary glanced at the farmhouse. Its dried mud walls were free of bullet pockmarks."How'd you go in? With bayonets?"The captain pushed up his helmet with his right hand and scratched the hair over his temple. "Yes and no.""What do you mean?""We got this guy. He does these things.""What things?""Like this farmhouse deal. He does them.""What?""He goes in and he kills the people. We use him for single-man assaults on positions, night-time work. He, uh, just produces, that's all. It's a lot easier than running up casually lists.""How does he do it?"The captain shrugged. "I don't know. I never asked him. He just does it.""I think he should get the Congressional Medal of Honor for this," MacCleary said."For what?" the captain asked. He looked confused."For getting these damn records by himself. For killing... how many men?""I think it was five in there." The captain still looked confused."For this and for killing five men.""For that?""Certainly."The captain shrugged his shoulders. "Williams does it all the time. I don't know what's so special about this time. If we make a big deal now, he'll be transferred out. Anyway, he doesn't like medals."

MacCleary stared at the captain, looking for the traces of a lie. There was none."Where is he?" MacCleary asked.The captain nodded. "By that tree."MacCleary saw that barrel chest in the crotch of the tree, a helmet pulled over a head. He glanced at the farmhouse, the bored captain and then back at the man under the tree."Keep a guard on those records," he said, then he walked slowly to the tree and stood over the sleeping Marine.He kicked the helmet from the head with enough dexterity not to cause injury.The Marine blinked, then lazily opened those eyelids."What's your name?" MacCleary asked."Who are you?""A major," MacCleary answered. He wore the leaves on his shoulders for convenience. He saw the Marine look at them."My name, sir, is Remo Williams," the Marine said, starting to rise."Stay there," MacCleary said. "You get the records?""Yes sir. Did I do anything wrong?""No. You thinking of making a career out of the Marines?""No, sir. My hitch is up in two months.""What are you going to do when you get out?""Go back to the Newark Police Department and get fat behind a desk.""It's a waste of a good man.""Yes, sir.""Ever think of joining the CIA?""No.""Would you like to?""No.""Won't change your mind?""No sir." The Marine was respectful with a sullenness that let MacCleary know the sirs were short convenient words just to avoid complication or involvement."That's Newark, New Jersey," MacCleary questioned. "Not Newark, Ohio?""Yes sir.""Good job.""Thank you, sir," the Marine had said and closed his eyes without bothering to reach for the helmet as a shade.That had been the last time MacCleary had seen those lids shut. It was a long time ago. And it had been a long time since MacCleary had been with the CIA.Williams slept just as peacefully under drugs. MacCleary nodded to the dark-haired man. "Okay, switch off the lights."The sudden blackness was just as blinding as the brightness."Expensive son of a bitch, wasn't he?" MacCleary asked. "You did a good job.""Thanks.""Got a cigarette?""Don't you ever carry them?""Not when I'm with you," MacCleary said.The two men laughed. And Remo Williams emitted a low groan."We got a winner," the dark-haired man said again."Yeah," MacCleary said. "His pain's just beginning." The two men laughed again. Then MacCleary sat quietly smoking, watching the cigarette glow orange red every time he inhaled.In a few minutes, the ambulance turned off the simple two-lane road onto the New Jersey Turnpike, a masterpiece of highway engineering and driving boredom. Several years

before, it had had the best safety record in the United States, but the growing control of the road, its staff and the state police by politicians had turned it into one of the most dangerous high-speed highways in the world.The ambulance roared on into the night. MacCleary bummed five more cigarettes before the driver slowed down and tapped on the window behind him,"Yes?" MacCleary asked."Only a few more miles to Folcroft.""Okay, keep going," MacCleary said. A lot of big shots were waiting for this package to arrive at Folcroft.The journey was one hundred minutes old when the ambulance rolled off the paved road and its wheels began kicking up gravel. The ambulance stopped and the man with the hook jumped from the rear door of the ambulance. He looked around quickly. No one in sight. He faced toward the front of the big Buick. A high iron gate loomed overhead, the only entrance through high stone walls. Over the gate, a bronze sign glinted in the October moon. Its somber letters read: Folcroft.Inside the ambulance, another groan.And back at the prison, Harold Haines realized what had been wrong. The lights had not dimmed when Remo Williams had died.At that moment, Remo Williams' "corpse" was rolling through the gates of Folcroft and Conrad MacCleary was thinking to himself: "We should put up a sign that says 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.'"

CHAPTER SEVEN"He's already in Medical?" asked the lemon-faced man sitting behind the immaculate glass-topped desk, the silent Long Island Sound dark behind him, and the computer outlets waiting by his fingertips like metallic butlers of the mind."No, I left him lying on the lawn so he could die from exposure. That way we can finish the work of the state," growled MacCleary. He was drained, emptied by the numbing exhaustion of tension.He had borne that tension for four months-from setting up the shooting in the Newark alley until last night's execution. And now, the unit chief, Harold W. Smith, the only other person at Folcroft who knew for whom everyone really worked, this son of a bitch with his account sheets and computers, was asking him whether he had looked after Remo Williams properly."You don't have to be so touchy, MacCleary. We've all been under a strain," Smith said. "We're still not out of the woods either. We don't even know if our new guest is going to work out. He's a whole new tactic for us, you know."Smith had that wonderful way of explaining something you were fully aware of. He did it with such casualness and sincerity MacCleary wanted to break up the computer outlets with his hook and shred them over Smith's immaculate gray-vested suit. MacCleary, however, only nodded and said: "Do I tell him it will be only five years?""My, we are in a nasty mood today," Smith said in his usual professorial manner. But MacCleary knew he had gotten to him.Five years. That was the original arrangement. Out of business in five years. That was what Smith had told him five years ago when they both resigned from the Central Intelligence Agency.Smith had been wearing that same damned gray vested suit. Which looked pretty damned peculiar because the two of them were on a motor launch ten miles east of Annapolis in the Atlantic."Five years should see this thing all wrapped up," Smith had said. "It's for the safety of the nation. If all goes well, the nation will never know we existed and the

constitutional government will be safe. I do not know if the President authorized this. I have one contact whom you are not permitted to know. I am your contact. No one else. Everyone else is deaf, dumb and blind.""Get to the point, Smitty," MacCleary said. He had never seen Smith so shaken."I chose you because you have no real ties to society. Divorced. No family. No prospects of ever starting one. And you are also, despite some odious character defects, a... well, a rather competent agent.""Stop the crap. What are we doing?"Smith stared across the foaming waves. "This country is in trouble," he said."We're always in some kind of trouble," MacCleary said.Smith ignored him. "We can't handle crime. It's that simple. If we live within the constitution, we're losing all hope of parity with the criminals, or at least, the organized ones. The laws don't work. The thugs are winning.""What's it to us?""It's our job. We're going to stop the thugs. The only other options are a police state or a complete breakdown. You and I are the third option."We're going under the name of CURE, a psychological research project sponsored by the Folcroft Foundation. But we are going to operate outside the law to break up organized crime. We're going to do everything, short of actual killing, to turn the tables. And then we disband.""No killing?" MacCleary asked."None. They figure we're dangerous enough as it is. If we weren't so desperate in this country, you and I wouldn't be here."MacCleary could see moisture well in Smith's eyes. So he loved his country. He had always wondered what moved Smith. Now he knew."No way, Smitty," MacCleary said. "I'm sorry.""Why?""Because I can see the whole pack of us, everyone who knows about this CURE thing, being ferried out to some crappy island in the Pacific after we close shop. Anyone who knows anything about this is going to be dead. You think they're going to take a chance on you and me writing our memoirs? No way, Smitty. Well, not me, baby."Smith stiffened. "You're already in. Sorry.""No way.""You know I can't let you out alive.""Right now I can throw you overboard." MacCleary paused. "Don't you see, Smitty? It's started already. You kill me; I kill you. No killing, huh?""Internal staff is allowed. Security." His hand was busy in his jacket pocket."Five years?" MacCleary asked."Five years.""You know I still believe that our bones are going to be bleaching on the sand on some Pacific island.""There's that possibility. So let's keep casulties down in our section. Just me and you. Others do their jobs without knowing. Good enough?""And we used to laugh at Kamikazes," MacCleary said.

CHAPTER EIGHTIt was more than five years. CURE had found crime bigger, more organized than the strongest suspicions of Washington.Whole industries, labor unions, police departments, even a state legislature were controlled by syndicates. Political campaigns cost money and crime had it. From the top came the word: "CURE to continue operations indefinitely."

Folcroft trained hundreds of agents, each knowing a special job, none knowing its purpose. Some were assigned to government agencies all over the country. Under the cover of FBI men or tax men or grain inspectors, they gathered up scraps of information.A special section set up an informer network that plumbed careless words from gin mills, gambling dives, brothels. The agents were taught to use the fast five dollar bill or even the larger bribe. Bar flies, pimps, whores, even clerks at checkout counters unwittingly contributed to CURE as they picked up their small change from the guy on the block or the man in that office or that lady writing a book. A few words for a few bucks.A bookie in Kansas City thought he was selling out to a rival syndicate when, for $30,000, he outlined how his bosses worked.A pusher in San Diego who somehow was never convicted by the courts, despite numerous arrests, always kept a pocketful of dimes for the lengthy phone calls he would make from pay booths.A bright young lawyer rose in a crooked New Orleans union as he kept winning cases until one day the FBI received a mysterious 300-page report that enabled the Justice Department to indict the leaders of the union. The bright young lawyer suddenly became very clumsy in court. The convicted union racketeers didn't get a chance for vengeance. The young man just left the state and disappeared.A high police official in Boston got in over his head at the track. A wealthy suburbanite writing a novel lent him $40,000. All the young author wanted to know was which cop was on whose pad. Of course, he wouldn't mention names. But he needed them to get the feel of his work.And behind it all was CURE. The information, in millions of words, the useless information, the big breaks, the false leads flooded into Folcroft, ostensibly headed for people who never were, for corporations that existed only on paper, for government agencies that never seemed to do government work.At Folcroft, an army of clerks, most of them thinking they worked for the Internal Revenue Service, recorded the information on business deals, tax returns, agricultural reports, gambling, narcotics, on anything that might be tainted by crime and some of it that couldn't possibly be, they thought.And the facts were fed into giant computers in one of the many off-limits sections of Folcroft's rolling grounds.The computers did what no man could. They saw patterns emerging from apparently unrelated facts and through their circuits, the broad picture of crime in America grew before the eyes of the chiefs at Folcroft. The how of organized lawlessness began to unfold.The FBI, Treasury Department and even the CIA received special reports, lucky leads. And CURE operated in different ways, where the law enforcement agencies were powerless. A Tuscaloosa crime kingpin suddenly got documented proof that a colleague, the man with whom he had split up Alabama's crime, was planning a takeover. The colleague got a mysterious tip that the kingpin was planning to eliminate him. It ended in a war that both lost.A large New Jersey pistol local changed command when sudden injections of big money saw the honest insurgents win at the union ballot boxes. It also saw the man who counted the votes retire quietly to Jamaica.But the whole operation was slow, murderously slow. CURE made its strikes but no really finishing blows against the giant syndicates that continued to grow, prosper and stretch their money-powered tentacles into every phase of American life.Moving agents into certain spheres-especially in the New York metropolitan area whose Cosa Nostra worked more smoothly and efficiently than any giant corporation-was like

unleashing doves into a flock of hawks. Informants disappeared. A special division head of the informer network was murdered. His body was never found.MacCleary learned to live with what he called "the monthlies." Like the agony of a woman's period would be Smith's every-thirty days berating."You spend enough money," he would say. "You use enough men and equipment. You spend more on tape recorders than the Army does on guns. And still the recruits you bring us don't do the job."And MacCleary would give his usual answer. "Our hands are tied. We can't use force."Smith would sneer. "In Europe, where you might recall we were highly successful against the Germans, we did not need force. The CIA uses very little force against the Russians and does rather well. But, you... you have to have cannons against these hoodlums.""You know very well, sir, we're not dealing with hoodlums." MacCleary would start to boil. "And you know damn well we had armies following us in Europe against the Germans and a whole military establishment waiting against the Russians. And all we have here are these goddam computers."Smith would straighten at his desk and imperiously command: "Computers would be good enough if we had the right personnel. Get us some people who know what they're doing."Then he would make out his reports for upstairs, saying computers were not enough.

CHAPTER NINEFor five years, the routine was the same until two a.m. one spring morning when MacCleary was trying to put himself to sleep with his second pint of rye, and Smith rapped on the door to his Folcroft suite."Stay out," MacCleary yelled. "Whoever you are."The door opened slowly and a hand snaked its way to the light switch. MacCleary sat in his shorts on a large purple pillow, cradling the bottle between his legs."Oh, it's you," he said to Smith who was dressed as though it were noon, in white shirt, striped tie and the eternal gray suit."How many gray suits you got, Smitty?""Seven. Sober up. It's important.""Everything's important to you. Paper clips, carbon paper, dinner scraps." He watched Smith glance around the room at the assorted pornography in oils, photographs and sketches, the 8-foot high cabinet stacked with bottles of rye, the pillows scattered on the floor and finally to MacCleary's pink shorts."As you know, we've had problems in the New York City area. We have lost seven men without recovering even one body. As you know, we have a problem with a man named Maxwell whom we don't even have a line on.""Really? That's interesting. I wondered what happened to all those people. Funny we didn't see them around.""We're going to low profile in New York until we have our new unit ready.""More fodder.""Not this time." Smith shut the door behind him. "We've been given permission, highly selective but permission nevertheless, to use force. A license to kill."MacCleary sat upright. He put down the bottle. "It's about time. Just five men. That's all I need. First, we'll get your Maxwell. And then the whole country.""There will be one man. You will recruit him this week and set up his training program in thirty days.""You're out of your bloody mind." MacCleary jumped from the pillows and paced the room. "You're out of your goddam mind," he shouted. "One man?""Yes.""How did you get us roped into that deal?"

"You know why we never had this type of personnel before. Upstairs was afraid. They're still afraid. But they figure one man can't do much harm and if he does, he's easily removable.""They're damned right he won't do much harm. He won't do much good either. He won't make enough of a splash to wipe up. And when he gets it?""You recruit another.""You mean we don't even have one on standby? We assume our man's indestructible?""We assume nothing.""You don't need a man for that job," MacCleary snarled. "You need Captain Marvel. Dammit, Smitty." MacCleary picked up the bottle and then threw it against the wall. It hit something and did not break, only increasing his anger. "Dammit, Smitty. Do you know anything about killing? Do you?""I've been associated with these projects before.""Do you know that out of fifty men, you might get one halfway competent agent for this type of work? One out of fifty. And I've got to get one out of one.""Make sure you get a good one," was Smith's calm reply."Good? Oh, he'll have to be good. He'll have to be a gem.""You'll have the finest training facilities for him. Your personnel budget is unlimited. You can have five... six instructors."MacCleary propped himself on the couch, right on Smith's jacket. "Couldn't do it with less than twenty.""Eight," Smith said."Fifteen.""Nine.""Eleven.""Ten.""Eleven," MacCleary insisted. "Body contact, motions, locks, armaments, conditions, codes, language, psychology. Couldn't do it with less than eleven instructors. All full time and then it would take at least six months.""Eleven instructors and three months.""Five months.""All right, eleven men and five months," Smith said. "Do you know of any agent who would be suited for this? Anybody in the CIA?""Not the superman you want.""How long to find one?""May never find one," MacCleary said, rummaging in the liquor cabinet. "Killers aren't made, they're born.""Rubbish. Lots of men, clerks, shopkeepers, anybody turn into killers in war.""They don't turn into killers, Smitty. They find out that they were killers. They were born that way. And what makes this damned thing so tough is that you don't always find them wearing guns. Sometimes, the really good ones have an aversion to violence. They avoid it. They know in their hearts, what they are, like the alky who takes one drink. They know what that drink means. It's the same with killing."MacCleary stretched out on the couch and began opening a new bottle. He waved at Smith as if to dismiss him. "I'll try to find one."The next morning, Smith was in his office drinking his fourth alka seltzer to wash down his third aspirin, when MacCleary entered with a bounce. He walked to the picture window and stared at the sound."What do you want?" Smith growled."I think I know our man.""Who is he? What does he do?"

"I don't know. I saw him once in Vietnam.""Get him," Smith said. "And you get out of here," he added as he popped another aspirin into his mouth. He called casually after MacCleary's back as he headed for the door: "Oh, there's a new wrinkle. One more little thing upstairs wants from your man." He spun toward the window. "The man we get cannot exist," he said.MacCleary's grin evaporated into astonishment."He cannot exist," Smith repeated. "No one anyone can trace. He has to be a man who doesn't exist, for a job that doesn't exist, in an organization that doesn't exist."He finally looked up. "Any questions?"MacCleary started to say something, changed his mind, turned around and walked out.It had taken four months. And now CURE had its man who didn't exist. He had died the night before in an electric chair.

CHAPTER TENThe first thing Remo Williams saw was the grinning face of the monk looking down at him. Over the face glared a white light. Remo blinked. The face was still there, still grinning down at him."Looks like our baby's going to make it," said the monk-face.Remo groaned. His limbs felt cold and leaden as though asleep for a thousand years. His wrists and ankles burned with pain where the electric straps had seared his flesh. His mouth was dry, his tongue like a sponge. Nausea swept up from his stomach and enveloped his brain. He thought he was vomiting but nothing came out.The air smelled of ether. He was lying on some sort of a table. He turned his head to see where he was, then stifled a scream. His head felt nailed to the board and he had just ripped out part of his skull. Slowly he let his head return to the position where it had seemed to be punctured. Something yelled in his brain. His scorched temples screamed.Kaboom. Kaboom. Kaboom. He shut his eyes and groaned again. He was breathing. Thank God, he was breathing. He was alive."We'll give him a sedative to ease the after effect," came another voice. "He'll be as good as new in a few days.""And with no sedative, how long?" came the monk's voice."Five, six hours. But he's going to be in agony. With a sedative, he'll be able to...""No sedative." It was the monk's voice.The puncture started moving around his skull, like a barber's hair massage with ten penny nails and kettle drums. Kaboom. Kaboom. Kaboom. Remo groaned again.It seemed like years. But the nurse told him it had been only six hours since he had regained consciousness. His breathing was easy. His arms and legs felt warm and vibrant. The pain had begun to dull at his temples and wrists and ankles. He lay on a soft bed in a white room. The afternoon sun was coming through the one large window to his right. Outside a soft breeze rocked the color-gloried autumn trees. A chipmunk scampered across a wide, gravel path that no one seemed to use. Remo was hungry. He was alive, thank God, and he was hungry.He rubbed his wrists, then turned to the stonefaced nurse sitting in a chair at the foot of his bed and said: "Do I get fed?""Not for forty-five minutes."The nurse was about forty-five. Her face was hard and lined. She wore no wedding band on her man-like hands. But her breasts nicely filled out the white uniform. Her legs, crossed above the knee, could have belonged to a sixteen-year-old. Her firm backside, Remo thought, was just a hop out of bed away.The nurse picked up a fashion magazine on her lap and began to read it in such a way

that it hid her face. She fidgeted in the seat and uncrossed her legs. Then she crossed them again. Then she put down the magazine and stared out the window.Remo adjusted his white night shirt and sat up in bed. He flexed his shoulders. It was the usual hospital room, white, one bed, one chair, one nurse, one bureau, one window. But the nurse wore no hat he recognized and the window was just one sheet of wired glass.He twisted his right arm behind his neck and brought the back of his night shirt over his left shoulder. There was no label. He leaned back in bed to wait for food. He closed his eyes. The bed was soft. It was good to be alive. To be alive, to hear, to breathe, to feel, to smell. It was the only purpose of life: to live.He was awakened by an argument. It was the monk with a hook versus the nurse and two men who appeared to be doctors."And I will not be responsible for this man's health if he eats anything but bland foods for two days," squealed one of the doctors. The nurse and the other doctor nodded approval in support of their colleague.The monk was out of cowl. He wore a maroon sweater and brown chinos. The yelling seemed to bounce off him. He rested his hook on the edge of the metal bed. "And I say I'm not asking you to be responsible. I'm responsible. He'll eat like a human being.""And die like a dog," the nurse interjected. The priest grinned and chucked her under the chin with his hook. "You're cute, Rocky," he said. She whipped her face violently away."If that man eats anything but pablum, I'm going to Division Chief Smith," said the first doctor."And I'll go with him," said the second doctor.The nurse nodded.The monk said, "All right, you go. Right now." He began shooing them to the door. "Give Smitty my love."When they were gone, he locked the door. Then he pulled a rolling tray from the kitchen over to the bed. He pulled over the nurse's chair and uncovered one of the silver vessels on the tray. It contained lobsters, four of them, oozing butter from their slit, red bellies."My name's Conn MacCleary," he said, spooning two lobsters into a plate and handing it to Remo.Remo lifted a metal cracking device and broke the claws. He scooped out the rich white meat with a small fork, and swallowed without even chewing. He washed it down with a large draft of golden beer suddenly in front of him. Then he went to work on the lobster's mid-section."I suppose you're wondering why you're here," Remo heard MacCleary say.Remo reached for the second lobster, this time crushing the claw with his hands, and sucking out the meat. A tumbler was half-filled with Scotch. He drank the smoky, brown liquid and quelled the burning with foaming beer."I suppose you're wondering why you're here," MacCleary repeated.Remo dipped a white chunk of lobster meat into a vessel of liquid butter. He nodded to MacCleary, then lifted the dripping lobster meat above his head, catching the butter on his tongue as he lowered the morsel to his mouth.MacCleary began to talk. He talked through bites of lobster, through the beer, and continued talking as the ash trays filled and the sun went down forcing him to turn on the lights.He talked about Vietnam where a young Marine entered a farmhouse and killed five VC. He talked about death and life. He talked about CURE."I can't tell you who runs it from the top," MacCleary said.

Remo rolled the brandy over his tongue. He preferred a less sweet drink."But I'm your boss. You can't have a real love life, but there will be plenty of women at your disposal. Money? No question. Only one danger: if you get in a spot where you may talk. Then it's chips out of the game. But if you watch yourself, there should be no trouble. You'll live to a nice, ripe, pension."MacCleary leaned back in the chair. "It's not impossible to live to a pension, either," he said, watching Remo search on the tray for something."Coffee?" Remo asked.MacCleary opened the top of a tall carafe that kept its contents hot."But, I've got to warn you, this is a dirty, rotten job," MacCleary said, pouring a cup of steaming coffee for Williams. "The real danger is that the work will kill you inside. If you have a night free, you get bombed out of your mind to forget. None of us have to worry about retirement because... okay, I'll level with you... none of us is going to live that long. The pension jazz is just a load of crap.He stared into Remo's cold gray eyes. He said: "I promise you terror for breakfast, pressure for lunch, tension for supper and aggravation for sleep. Your vacations are the two minutes you're not looking over your shoulder for some hood to put one in the back of your head. Your bonuses are maybe five minutes when you're not figuring out how to kill someone or keep from getting killed."But I promise you this." MacCleary lowered his voice. He stood up and rubbed his hook. "I promise you this. Some day, America may never need CURE, because of what we do. Maybe some day, kids we never had can walk down any dark street any time and maybe a junkie ward won't be their only end. Some day, Lexington won't be filled with fourteen-year-old hopheads who can't wait for another needle and young girls aren't whisked like cattle from one whorehouse to another."And maybe honest judges can sit behind clean benches and legislators won't take campaign funds from gamblers. And all union men will be fairly represented. We're fighting the fight the American people are too lazy to fight-maybe a fight they don't even want won."MacCleary turned from Remo and went to the window. "If you live six months, it'll be amazing. If you live a year, it'll be a miracle. That's what we have to offer you."Remo poured cream into the coffee until it was very light."What do you say?" he heard MacCleary ask. Remo glanced up and saw MacCleary's reflection in the window. His eyes were reddened, his face taut. "What do you say?" MacCleary repeated."Yeah, sure, sure," Remo said, sipping the coffee. "You can count on me." That seemed to satisfy the dumb cop."Did you frame me?" Remo asked."Yeah," MacCleary answered without emotion."You kill the guy?""Yeah.""Good job," Remo said. As Remo inquired if there were any cigars, he wondered casually when MacCleary would find himself headed for an electric chair with a sudden absence of friends.

CHAPTER ELEVEN"Impossible, sir," Smith cradled the special scrambler phone between his ear and the shoulder of his gray Brooks Brothers suit. With his free hands, he marked papers, setting up a vacation schedule.A stiff, gloomy, rain whipped across Long Island Sound behind him bringing an unnaturally early nightfall.

"I appreciate your difficulties," Smith said, counting the days a computer clerk wanted near Christmas. "But we worked out a policy a long time ago about New York. No extensive operations.""Yes, I know a Senate committee will be investigating crime. Yes. It will start in San Francisco. Yes. And move across the country and we will supply you with background and you will supply the Senate with background; yes, making the Senators look good. I see. Upstairs needs the Senate for many other things. Right. Yes. Good. Well, I'd like to help you, but no, not in New York. We just can't get a canvass. Maybe later. Tell upstairs, not in New York."Smith hung up the receiver."Christmas," he mumbled. "Everyone's got to have Christmas off. Why not the sensible and convenient month of March? Christmas. Bah."Smith felt good. He had just turned down a not-too-superior superior over the scrambler phone. Smith recreated the scene again for the pleasure of his mind: "I'd like to help, but no." How polite he was. How firm. How smooth. How wonderful. It was good to be Harold W. Smith the way he was Harold W. Smith.He whistled an off-tune rendition of "Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer" as he denied Christmas vacation after Christmas vacation.The scrambler phone rang again. Smith answered and casually sang: "Smith, 7-4-4." Suddenly he straightened, his left hand shot up to the receiver, his right adjusted his tie and he bleated out a snappy "Yes sir."It was the voice with the unmistakable accent, giving the code number that no one needed to recognize him."But sir, in this area there are special problems... yes, I know you authorized a new type of personnel... yes sir, but he won't be ready for months... a canvass is almost impossible under... very good, sir, I appreciate your position. Yes sir. Very good, sir." Smith gently hung up the scrambler, the wide phone with the white dot on the receiver, and mumbled under his breath: "The damn bastard."

CHAPTER TWELVE"What now?" Remo asked listlessly. He leaned against a set of parallel bars in a large, sunlit, gym. He wore a white costume with a white silk sash they told him was necessary in order to learn some things he couldn't pronounce.He toyed with the sash and glanced at MacCleary who waited by an open door at the far end of the gym. A .38 police special dangled from the hook."One more minute," MacCleary called."I can't wait," Remo mumbled and ran a wicker sandal across the polished wood floor. It made a hiss and left a faint scratch that buffing would eliminate.Remo suddenly sniffed the air. The scent of dying chrysanthemums tickled his nostrils. This wasn't a gym smell. It belonged to a Chinese whorehouse.He didn't bother to figure it out. There were many things he gave up thinking about. It didn't pay to think. Not with this crew.He whistled softly to himself and stared at the high wide ceiling buttressed by thick metal beams. What would it be now? More gun training? In two weeks, instructors had shown him everything from Mauser action rifles to pipe pistols. He had been responsible for taking them apart, putting them together, knowing where they could be jammed; knowing the ranges and the accuracy. And then there were the position exercises.The lying down with your arm over a pistol, then grabbing and firing. The guarded sleep where your lids are half shut and you don't give yourself away by moving your body first. That had been painful. Every time his stomach muscles twitched as they do with anyone trying to move an arm to a certain position while lying down, a thick stick would

slap across his navel."The best way," an instructor had said cheerfully. "You really can't control your stomach muscles so we train them for you. We're not punishing you; we're punishing your muscles. They'll learn, even if you don't."The muscles had learned.And then the hello. For hours they had him practice the casual hello and the firing of the gun as the instructor moved to shake hands.And over and over, the same words: "Get in close. Close, you idiot, close. You're not sending a telegram. Move your hand as if you're going to shake. No, no! The gun is obvious. You should have three shots off before anyone around you realizes you're hostile. Now try it again. No. With a smile. Try it again. Now with a little bounce to take the eyes off your hand. Ah, good. Once more."It had become automatic. He had tried it on MacCleary once in a strategy session, those classes MacCleary chose to teach himself. Remo came in with the hello, but as he raised the blank pistol to fire, a blinding flash caught his eyes. He didn't know what had happened, not even when MacCleary, laughing, lifted him to his feet."You're learning," MacCleary had said."Yeah, it looks it. How come you noticed?""I didn't. My muscles did. You'll be taught that. Your reflex action is faster than your conscious action.""Yeah," Remo said. "I can't wait." He rubbed his eyes. "What'd you hit me with?""Fingernails.""What?""Fingernails." He extended his hand. "You see, I...""Never mind," Remo said and they got down to apartment entrances and locks. When the session was over, MacCleary asked, "Lonely?""No, it's a ball," Remo answered. "I go to classes. The instructor and me are the only ones there. I go to sleep and a guard wakes me up in the morning. I get up and a waitress brings me my food. They won't talk to me. They're afraid. I eat alone. I sleep alone. I live alone. Sometimes I wonder if the chair wouldn't have been better.""Judge for yourself. You were in the chair. Did you enjoy it?""No. How'd you get me out anyway?""Easy. The pill was a drug to paralyze you into looking dead. We had the chair's electrical system rewired. When one of our guys pressed a switch, it cut the voltage down just enough to burn, but not to kill. After we left the place, a timer set the whole control panel afire so there'd be no traces. It was easy.""Yeah, easy for you, but not for me.""Don't knock it, you're here." MacCleary's constant smile disappeared. "But maybe you're right. The chair might have been better. This is a lonely business.""You're telling me." Remo grunted a laugh. "Look. I'll be going out on assignments sometime. Why can't I go into town tonight?""Because when you pass that gate, you'll never return.""That's no explanation.""You can't afford to be seen near here. You know what happens if we're ever going to have to dump you."Remo wished the blank gun strapped to his wrist were real. But then he probably couldn't get a shot off against MacCleary anyhow. Maybe just one night, one night into town, a few drinks. That was a modern lock but it had its weaknesses. What would they do to him? Kill him? They had too much invested. But then with this crew, who knew what the hell they'd do?"You want a woman?" MacCleary asked.

"What kind, one of those ice cubes that cleans my room or delivers my food?""A woman," MacCleary said. "What do you care? Turn 'em upside down and they're all the same."Remo agreed. And after it was over, he vowed it would be the last time he let CURE do his procuring for him.Just before lunch, as he was washing his hands in the small bathroom attached to his room, there was a knock on the door."Come in," Remo yelled. He ran his hands under the cool water to rinse off the non-scented soap CURE had provided.Drying bis hands on the unmarked white towel, he stepped into the room. What he saw wasn't really bad at all.She was in her late twenties, a few years younger than Remo. Athletically developed breasts pushed against her blue clerk's uniform. Her brown hair was set pony-tail fashion. The skirt swirled around her rather flattish hips. Her legs were just a bit thick."I saw your room number and the time on the board," she said. Remo recognized the accent as Southern California. At least, that's what he would have written on one of the speech recognition tests."On the board?" Remo asked. He stared at her eyes. There was something missing. They were blue, but deadened like lenses on small Japanese hand cameras."Yes, the board," she said, not moving from the door. "This is the right room?""Uh, yeah," Remo said, dropping the towel on the bed. "Yeah, sure."Her face brightened with a smile. "I like to be undressed when I do it," she said, staring at his broad muscled chest. Remo unconsciously pulled in his stomach.She shut the door behind her and before she reached the bed she was unbuttoning the blouse. She dropped the blouse over the wooden bedpost and forced her hands behind her back to unhitch the bra.Her stomach was white and flat. Her breasts dropped gently from the bra's cups, but not so far as to show she wasn't firm. The nipples were red and already hardened.She folded the bra over the blouse and turned to Remo and said, "C'mon, I don't have all day. I have to be back in codes in forty minutes. This is my lunch hour."Remo forced his eyes away, then threw the towel off the bed. He dropped his trousers and his hesitancy.She was waiting for him under the sheets by the time he unlaced his shoes. Gently he lifted the sheets and got into bed. She forced one of his arms behind her back, the other between her legs, and whispered, "Kiss my breasts."It was over in five minutes. She responded with an animal fury strangely without honest passion. Then she was out of bed before Remo was really sure he had had a woman."You're all right," she said, wriggling into her white panties.Remo laid on his back and stared at the white ceiling. His right arm was tucked between his head and the pillow. "How would you know? You weren't here long enough."She laughed. "I wish we had more time. Maybe tonight.""Yeah. Maybe." Remo said, "but I usually have instructions at night.""What kind?""The usual."Remo glanced up at the girl. She was putting her bra back on, Hollywood style. She held it in front of her, points down, then bent forward lowering her breasts into the cups.She kept talking: "I didn't know what kind of work you do. I mean, I never saw a number like yours on the board before."Remo cut her off. "What's this board you're talking about?" He stared at the ceiling. She smelled strongly of deodorant.

"Oh. In the recreation room. If you want relationships, you put your room and code number on the board. A man and a woman's number come up and a clerk just matches them up. You're not supposed to know who you'll be doing it with. They say if you know you could get serious and everything. But after awhile, you can figure numbers and wait to put yours in. Like women always have a zero in front of their numbers, men have odd first numbers. You have nine. That's the first time I ever saw that.""What's my number?""Nine-one. You mean you didn't know that? For crying out...""I forgot."She chattered on. "It's a good system. The group leaders encourage it. Nobody gets involved and everybody is satisfied."Remo glanced at her. She was dressed again and bounding toward the door in her low-heeled shoes. "Just a minute," Remo said, smirking. "Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye?""Kiss you?" she said just before she slammed the door. "I don't even know you."Remo didn't know whether to laugh or just go to sleep and forget about it. He did neither. He vowed never to do his loving in Folcroft again.That had been more than a week ago, and now he was anxious to get on with the assignments. Not that he relished the work. He just wanted to get out of Folcroft, get out of the cozy little jail.He rammed the slipper against the gym floor again. There was probably some reason for slippers. There was a reason for everything. But he didn't give a damn anymore. "Well, how about it?" he yelled over to MacCleary."Just a minute now. Ah, here he comes."When Remo looked up, he almost laughed. But the figure shuffling in was too pathetic for laughs. He was about five feet tall. A white uniform with a red sash hung loosely over his very skinny frame. A few white wisps of hair floated gently around his emaciated oriental face. The skin was wrinkled like old yellow parchment.He wore slippers, too, and carried two thick boards that clapped hollowly with his shuffling gait.MacCleary, almost deferentially, fell in behind the man. They stopped before Remo."Chiun, this is Remo Williams, your new student."

CHAPTER THIRTEENChiun bowed. Remo just stared. "What's he going to teach me?""To kill," MacCleary said. "To be an indestructible, unstoppable, nearly invisible killing machine."Remo threw his head toward the ceiling and exhaled loudly. "C'mon, Conn. Get off it. Who is he? What's his line?""Murder," MacCleary said calmly. "If he wanted, you would be dead now, before you could blink."The chrysanthemum scent was strong. So it came from the Chink. Murder? He looked like an outpatient from an old age home."Want to shoot him?" MacCleary asked."Why should I? He's not long for this world anyway."Chium remained impassive, as if he did not understand the conversation. The large hands folded over the thick wooden planking showed bulging veins. The face, even the slanted brown eyes, revealed nothing but eternal calm. It was almost a violent calm in the face of the recent offer. Remo glanced at MacCleary's dull gray revolver. Then he looked back into the eyes. Nothing."Let me see the .38." He removed the revolver from MacCleary's hook. It rested heavily

in the palm of his hand. Remo's mind automatically rolled through the pistol qualifications as they had been drilled into him during training. Range, usual accuracy, percentage of misfires, impact. Chiun would be a dead man."Is Chan going to hide behind something, or what?" Remo asked. He spun the barrel. Dark shell casings. Probably extra primer."It's Chiun. And no, he'll be in the gym chasing you."MacCleary's hook rested on his hip. It was a sign he had a joke in store. Remo had seen the "precede" several times before. They had trained him to look for the precede in every man. Everyone had it, the instructors said, you just had to learn to find it. The hook on the hip was MacCleary's."If I finish him, do I get a week out of here?""A night," MacCleary answered."So you think I might be able to do it?""No. I'm just stingy, Remo. Don't want you to get too excited.""A night?""A night.""Sure," Remo said, "I'll kill him." He kept the revolver close to his body, about chest high, where they taught him firing was most accurate and the gun safest from fast hands in front.He aimed the barrel at Chiun's frail chest. The little man remained motionless. A faint smile seemed to gild his face."Now?" Remo asked."Give yourself a chance," MacCleary said. "Let him start at the other end of the gym. You'd be dead now before you pulled the trigger.""How long does it take to pull a trigger? I have the initiator's advantage.""No, you don't. Chiun can move between the time your brain decides to shoot and your finger moves on the trigger."Remo backed away one step. His forefinger rested gently on the trigger. All .38's of this type had hair firing mechanisms. He lowered his gaze from Chiun's eyes to his chest. Perhaps it was by hypnosis through the eyes that Chiun could slow down his movements. One instructor had said some Orientals could do that."It's not hypnosis either, Remo," MacCleary said. "So you can look in his eyes. Chiun. Put down the boards. That'll come later."Chiun lowered the boards to the floor. He was slow, yet his legs seemed to remain motionless as the trunk descended to the floor. The boards made no sound as they touched the wooden floor. Chiun rose, then walked away toward the far corner of the gym where white cotton stuffed mats were hanging against the wall. As Chiun retreated, Remo's arm extended for accuracy. He did not have to keep the gun close to protect it.The old man's white uniform was lighter than the mats. Still the coloring was no problem. The afternoon sun glinted off the red sash. Remo aimed just above it. He would go for the trunk and when Chiun was squirming in a blood puddle on the floor, Remo would take five steps closer and put two bullets into the white hair."Ready?" MacCleary yelled, stepping back from what would become the firing pattern."Ready," Remo called out. So MacCleary didn't bother to check the old man. Maybe this was one of the frequent tests. Maybe this old man, unable to speak English, pitiful in his frailty, was the victim offered to see if Remo would kill. What a pack of bastards.Remo sighted by barrel instead of the "V". Never trust the sights on another man's gun. The distance was forty yards."Go," yelled MacCleary and Remo squeezed twice. Cotton chunks flew from the mats as the shots thunked where Chiun had been. But the old man was coming, moving quickly, sideways up the gym floor, like a dancer with a horrible itch, a funny little man on a funny

little journey. End it now.Another shot rang out in the gym. The funny little man kept coming, now crawling, now leaping, shuffling, but moving. Give him a lead. Crack!And he kept coming. Fifty feet away. Wait for thirty. Now. Two shots reverberated through the gymnasium and the old man was suddenly walking slowly, with the shuffle with which he had entered the gym. There were no bullets left.Remo in rage threw the pistol at Chiun's head. The old man seemed to pluck it from the air as if it were a butterfly. Remo didn't even see the hands move. The acrid fumes of spent powder drowned the scent of chrysanthemums as the old man handed the pistol back to Remo.Remo took it and offered it to MacCleary. When the hook came close, Remo dropped the revolver to the floor. It landed with a cracking sound."Pick it up," MacCleary said."Stuff it."MacCleary nodded to the old man. The next thing Remo knew, he was flat on the floor getting a close look at the grain of the gym's wooden flooring. It didn't even hurt, he went down so quickly."Well, Chiun?" Remo heard MacCleary ask.In delicate, if not fragile, English, Chiun answered, "I like him." The voice was soft and high-pitched. Definitely oriental yet with clipped, British overtones. "He does not kill for the immature and foolish reasons. I see no patriotism or ideals, but good reasoning. He would have slain me for a night's entertainment. That is a good reason. He is a smarter man than you, Mr. MacCleary. I like him."Remo got to his feet, bringing the gun with him. He didn't even know where he had been hit until he attempted a mock bow toward Chiun."Yeeow," Remo cried."Hold breath. Now bend," Chiun ordered.Remo exhaled. The pain was gone. "All muscles, because they depend on the blood, depend on the oxygen," Chiun explained. "You will first learn to breathe.""Yeah," Remo said, handing the revolver